Because of what they
have in common with kings, thieves, water and fire,

They engender
suffering.

When desires are like
lures hurled [by the hunter],

Who in possession of
himself would delight in those desires?

COMMENT:

The relevance of the
reference to kings, thieves, water and fire, according to a note by
EBC, is that any one of these can seize [pleasures/desires] from
us.

The
commonality referred to in the 2nd pāda, then, seems to
be the tendency that desires share with kings, thieves, water and
fire to steal away what we think of as belonging to us.

EHJ concurs with a note
to the effect that Kings etc. hold the passions jointly with the
owners [of the passions] in the sense that they may take away the
objects of enjoyment at any time. This idea and the use of sādhāraṇa
to express it are both common. The group consists sometimes of these
four, sometimes of five, adding kinsfolk, sometimes of six, adding
foes.

EHJ adds: The exact
connection of praviddhāmiṣa[EHJ
trans: “an exposed bait”] with the first line is not
clear to me, presumably bait or prey which attracts robbers etc.

My reading of
praviddhāmiṣa (lit. “hurled
flesh” or “a hurled lure”) is that the agent doing the hurling is
our old friend kāma-vyādha, Desire the hunter, who we met in
SN13.36:

saṃkalpa-viṣa-digdhā
hi pañcendriya-mayāḥ śarāḥ /

For smeared with the
poison of conceptions,

are those arrows,
produced from five senses,

cintā-puṅkhā
rati-phalā viṣayākāśa-gocarāḥ // 13.35

Whose tails are
anxiety, whose tips are thrills,

and whose range is the
vast emptiness of objects.

manuṣya-hariṇān
ghnanti kāma-vyādheritā hṛdi /

Fired off by Desire,
the hunter, they strike human fawns in the heart;

vihanyante yadi na te
tataḥ patanti taiḥ kṣatāḥ // 13.36

Unless they are warded
away, men wounded by them duly fall.

niyamājira-saṃsthena
dhairya-kārmuka-dhāriṇā /

Standing firm in the
arena of restraint, and bearing the bow of resolve,

nipatanto nivāryās-te
mahatā smṛti-varmaṇā // 13.37

The mighty man, as they
rain down, must fend them away,

wearing the armour of
sustained awareness.

Especially in view of Aśvaghoṣa's treatment of the teaching of pratītya-samutpāda, I am firm in
the conviction that Aśvaghoṣa wrote Buddhacarita first and then
wrote Saundarananda as a kind of colourful illustration of the
application of fundamental teachings, like pratītya-samutpāda, that
he had already introduced.

Thus in SN Canto 3
Aśvaghoṣa mentions in passing the Buddha's statement of the twelve
links, and in SN Canto 17 Aśvaghoṣa describes Nanda's ultimate
cessation of and triumph over ignorance (aka darkness). But there is
no specific mention in Saundarananda of the teaching of
pratītya-samutpāda. Evidently that specification had already taken
place in the second half of Buddhacarita, i.e. the part for which
Aśvaghoṣa's original Sanskrit is missing.

Notwithstanding the
objection, in that case, that today's verse could not have been
referring specifically to SN13.36, which Aśvaghoṣa had yet to
write, I think the metaphor fits of Desire the hunter throwing out
lures and firing off arrows.

In terms of that
metaphor, then, the alternative answer to the rhetorical question
asked in today's verse might be like this:

When desires are like
lures hurled [by Desire the hunter], the person who would delight in
those desires might be the mighty man who is up for the challenge,
being clad in the armour of sustained awareness (smṛti-varmaṇā).

Due to the operation of
karma in three times (short-term, medium-term and very long term),
even if I have gone to sleep thinking of light as opposed to
darkness, I often wake up in the morning feeling weak and
discouraged. In that state, my first constructive step is to remember
the verse that I am going to publish later on. In so doing, I am
confident, based on past experience, that every verse has something
in it that will inspire me to want to get out of bed and sit.

Today's verse, when I
resorted to it like this, seemed to me to contain the encouragement
to get up and work at developing smṛti, sustained awareness, or, as it is
generally called “mindfulness.”

If unwieldiness were no
objection in seeking a translation of smṛti, I might be tempted to
translate it assustained, meditative,reflective, total awareness (s-m-r-t-a):

sustained,
because smṛ originally means to remember: it includes a sense of something working over time.

meditative,
because smṛti as the Buddha describes it is an adornment of the 4th
stage of sitting-meditation (dhyāna); and it is something to be developed through
meditation (bhāvana).

reflective, as
opposed to careful, and as opposed to intellectual; and also because
smṛti is described as having a protective function, like armour
that reflects or deflects arrows.

total, as
opposed to partial, and as opposed to intellectual; and because it is
a function of the whole body and mind, including (as my teacher
always took pains to emphasize) the function of the autonomic nervous
system.

awareness, or
attention, or attentiveness, as opposed to mindfulness,
because “mindfulness” originally carried with it the spiritual
whiff of Buddhism, though nowadays it seems to be taking on more the clinical pong (from bleach used as disinfectant?) of MBSR
“mindfulness based stress reduction.”

My teacher, Gudo
Nishijima, was skeptical about so-called “mindfulness" meditation. The way he saw it, the primary point of Zazen was to keep the spine
straight vertically, tucking the chin in slightly. When one devoted
oneself to this action, thoughts and feelings subsided and one
entered samādhi, the state like the sea, which my teacher identified with
balance of the autonomic nervous system. The Chinese character used
to represent smṛti (念;
Jap: NEN), my teacher understood simply to mean “the mind when the
autonomic nervous system is balanced.”

Where this
understanding of smṛti seems to me to fall down is in failing to
convey the developmental aspect that the Buddha's teaching, as
recorded in Pali and Sanskrit, so clearly conveys, especially by the
word bhāvana.

When we think about
what we, as followers of the Buddha, are here to develop, as the
antidote to the ignorance which lies at the root of all suffering,
then wisdom (prajñā), and especially insight into the real meaning
of the four noble truths, is the obvious primary antidote to
ignorance.

Prajñā (wisdom,
knowing) is the first of three divisions of the noble eightfold
path, the other two divisions being śīla (integrity, good conduct,
discipline) and samādhi (balance, stillness, balanced stillness).

I am not sure whether
śīla per se is something to be developed. It might rather be
something to be practised or maintained. And samādhi per se, as a
state like the sea, might be something to be entered rather than
developed. But within samādhi as a division of the eightfold path
are included both samādhi per se and smṛti. And smṛti, as the
Buddha taught it, is evidently something to be developed.

The evidence for this
pervades the www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net website, but perhaps the
best evidence to cite would be the final section of the Mahāsatipaṭṭhānasuttaṁ, whose title
Satipaṭṭhānabhāvanānisaṁso is translated by
Ānandajoti Bhikkhu as “The Advantages of Developing the
Ways of Attending to Mindfulness.”

This section of the
Mahāsatipaṭṭhānasuttaṁ emphasizes the benefits of developing the ways of attending to sati / smṛti (sustained meditative reflective total awareness?)
over a definite period of time – say seven years, or six years, or
five years, or four years, or three years, or two years, or one year,
or seven months, or six months, or five months, or four months, or
three months, or two months, or one month, or half a month, or seven
days.

Remember!

True Awareness

Is Manifest

Dullness and Distraction

How Can They Arrive?

MASA NI SHIRUBESHI, SHONEN GENZEN SUREBA,

KONSAN NANZO ITARAN?

Remember: when true reflective awareness is manifest,

how can dullness and distraction intervene?

When I look at these Chinese characters, 正念, from Fukan-zazengi-shinpitsu-bon, I recognize that these two characters originally represent the Sanskrit samyak-smṛti, or true mindfulness, and yet at the same time an effort might be necessary to reconnect samyak-smṛti and正念.

sādhāraṇa:
mfn. " having or resting on the same support or basis " ,
belonging or applicable to many or all , general , common to all ,
universal , common to (gen. dat. instr. with and without saha , or
comp.); like , equal or similar to (instr. or comp.); behaving alike